SELF-ESTEEM-The Begining of Self Improvement

How do you stay calm, composed and maintain self-esteem in a tough environment? Here are some tips you may want to consider as a starter guide to self improvement.
Imagine yourself as a Dart Board. Everything and everyone else around you are the dart at one point or another. These darts will destroy your self-esteem and pull you down in ways you won’t even remember. Don’t let them destroy you or get the best of you. So which darts should you avoid?

Dart Pin #1 : Negative Work Environment
Avoid the “dog eat dog” environment where everyone else is fighting just to get ahead. This is where non-appreciative people usually thrive. No one will appreciate your contributions even if you miss lunch and dinner, and stay up late. Most of the time you work too much without getting help or the appropriate credit. Stay away from this, it will ruin your self-esteem. Competition is at stake anywhere. Competition is healthy. But, don’t set yourself up for failure and undue stress by contributing to unhealthy competition.

Dart Pin #2: Other People’s Behavior
Bulldozers, brown-nosers, gossip mongers, whiners, back stabbers, snipers, controller freaks, naggers, complainers, exploders, patronizers, sluffers… all these kinds of people will pose bad vibes for your self-esteem, as well as to your self improvement scheme.

Dart Pin #3: Changing Environment
Change challenges our paradigms. It tests our flexibility, adaptability and alters the way we think. Change will make life difficult for awhile, it may cause stress but it will force us to find ways to improve ourselves. Change is forever, and we must adapt to it.

Dart Pin #4: Past Experience
It’s okay to cry and say “ouch!” when we experience pain. But don’t let pain transform itself into fear. It might grab you by the tail and swing you around. Treat each failure and mistake as a lesson. Pack that baggage and use move to a different and better place.

Dart Pin #5: Negative World View
Look at where you’re looking. Don’t wrap yourself up with all the negativities of the world. In building self-esteem, we must learn how to make the best out of worst situations.

Dart Pin #6: Determination Theory
Your psychology and behavioral traits are said to be a mixed of your inherited traits, your upbringing, and your environment e.g. your spouse, the company, the economy or your circle of friends. You have your own identity. If your father is a failure, it doesn’t mean you have to be a failure too. Learn from other people’s experience, so you’ll never have to encounter the same mistakes.

Sometimes, you may wonder if some people are born leaders or positive thinkers. Being positive, and staying positive is a choice. Building self-esteem and drawing lines for self improvement is a choice. God wouldn’t come down from heaven and tell you, “You may now have the permission to build self-esteem and improve your self.”

In life, its hard to stay tough specially when things and people around you keep pulling you down. When we get to the battle field, we should choose the right weapons to bring and armor to use. Life’s choices give us an array of options. Along the battle, we will get hit and bruised. And wearing armor ideally means ‘change.’ The kind of change that comes from within. Armor or self change means changing 3 things: our attitude, our behavior and our way of thinking.

Building self-esteem will eventually lead to self improvement if we start to become responsible for who we are, what we have, and what we do. Its a flame that gradually spreads like a brush fire from inside and out. When we develop self-esteem, we take control of our mission, values and discipline. Self-esteem brings about self improvement, true assessment, and determination. So how do you start building the blocks of self-esteem? Be positive. Be contented and happy. Be appreciative. Never miss an opportunity to compliment another or yourself. A positive way of living will help you build self-esteem.